The assumption is that the PCs arrive there first, but GMs are supposed to track their time on the road (for very loose definitions of road) and if they're slow, then they might not arrive first. Here are the other factions, their arrival time, and what they do, very briefly:
—Red Mantis: Arrive at 56 days, sneak in, find what they want, and get out without anyone being the wiser.
—Aspis Consortium: Arrive at 59 days, pay a big chest to the inhabitants for the information, leave in peace.
—Pathfinder Society: Arrive at 63 days, fight the inhabitants. Some of their group are prisoners, and they kill about a third of the inhabitants, who are replenished as hunters in the backcountry wander back into town in 1d3 days.
—Free Captains: Arrive at 65 days, make a frontal assault, kill half of the inhabitants, loot the Aspis Consortium bribe, and lose a few of their own, including the leader of their expedition.
—Sargavan Government: Arrive at 68 days, make a frontal assault, wipe out everybody still there in a 2-day seige. If the PCs arrive after this, they find the whole town abandoned and looted, except for the bodies.
The inhabitants are some kind of demon-worshiping man-apes, or awakened anthropomorphic apes like in Tarzan, but with clothes and gear and stuff. There's also a serpentman priest who leader their cult. Tar pits linger all over Tazion, which look like water, but acts as flammable quicksand.
Trying to sneak into the city subjects the PCs to barbed net traps and three trios of man-ape guards. Or, they can attempt to sneak in via the old abandoned aqueducts, since the man-apes are unaware of them. One of them is collapsed partway through, but the other gets them in. There is a water elemental that lives here, though, left by the Azlanti to clean the aqueducts or somesuch. If they make it past this, though, they will end up either in an old water tower, now full of snakes (Very dangerous! You go first!) or the Well of Unending Screams (see below.)
In the Well of Unending screams, there are a few decapus—forest octopi who create magical illusions kind of like will-o-the-wisps. And then, you'd have to climb a 60 foot old stone wall out of the well.
There's also an old Azlanti ziggurat to explore. Here, the PCs find giant wasps, some old Azlanti idols (that serve as a kind of small stone golems with a permanent magic mouth effect on them). There's another room dedicated to the Dark Tapestry (i.e., Lovecraftian cults) full of dark, stagnant water and leeches.
There's a "fungal predator" lurking in a staircase. Yellow mold, cobras, more wasps, more man-apes and a gorillon (Barsoomian white ape) round out the remainder of the hazards until the PCs find the "bosses" and solve the gemstone puzzles in a pillar of light (Raiders of the Lost Ark map room, anyone?) that reveal the map to Saventh-Yhi (seriously; did anyone ever in the history of the world build anything like these ridiculous D&D puzzles that you have to solve?) Solving the puzzle is complicated by the fact that a serpentman wizard, who leads the Tazion man-ape cult, will probably try to kill the PCs for stumbling into the room where the route is noted. He's also collected three of the four gems needed to solve the puzzle—so fighting him is kind of necessary. I'm not sure how the Red Mantis were supposed to get what they want without dealing with him. Plot hole warning.
Anyway, for the next adventure in the series, the PCs hurry off from the first lost city to the real lost city further inland.
There's a section on Eleder, the city mentioned at the front of the module, although it's quite brief (less than five pages) as well as some other stuff that's less useful (information on the weird nature god of Golarion, part 2 of a serial story, etc.) And, as always, they round out the module with a small bestiary. Some of the guys will be ones that were faced in the adventure, but some are not. There are also random monster tables for the jungle and the savanna that the PCs will be crossing, which is nice. The monsters are a weird shark-themed mermaid race, a weird tropical fey not unlike jungley redcaps, I suppose, really nasty weird mosquito swarms that cause sleeping sickness, brain-eating ape-bears (as mentioned in the first half of the module), and a strange creature that's essentially a storm elemental—half water, half air, all angry. They also have little side-bars congratulating themselves on researching African and East Indies folklore to come up with these creatures that nobody else will ever have heard of or therefore care where they come from.
So what stats would I need other than NPCs for this module, and what do I not have, assuming I were to use all of these? I've mostly adopted (or simply used) stats that I already have, but anything I'd have to invent I've marked with the dagger sign (†).
- dogs with some kind of rabies feature (I can easily add the dire rat disease to wolf stats from FANTASY HACK.)
- a kelpie (I probably have something aquatic that I can use as a surogate—but I probably won't use this anyway.) †
- a thunderbird (I certainly don't have this.) †
- a raptor dinosaur (already covered)
- a crystal ooze (I dislike oozes. They should be more like hazards than monsters, if you even use them at all, in my opinion.) †
- salt wights (can just use wights just fine as is. Same for the cairn wight boss.)
- the brain-eating ape-bears (I can either use an ape or a bear and give them a magical ability. Either that or just have them make creepy brain-eating attacks without changing the stats at all.)
- an ankheg. † Plague zombies too—although I'd just use skeleton stats for minion type undead.
- a Loch Ness monster of some sort. I'd probably also make this a raptor dinosaur that happens to swim. If I wanted it to be really challenging, I could use a sea serpent, but then only quite powerful PCs could hope to deal with it.
- lizardmen (got 'em) and hippos (don't got 'em, but an aquatic rhino is close enough. Instead of goring with its rhino horns, a hippo uses its big hippo tusks in the same fashion.
- I also don't have a zombie troll †, nor do I think I'd want something so unusual and esoteric. But I do have a succubus.
- I've already got a water elemental, so I'm set there.
- Decapus, or some other kind of octopus, I suppose. I'm actually a little bit surprised that I don't have a giant octopus already that I can make terrestrial as needed. †
- a four-armed white ape. Can use gug stats.
- stone golems. I don't actually have these, but I've noted before that I probably should. †
- REH style man-apes. I'd probably use baboon stats but raise the intelligence and give them spears and daggers and stuff. Powerful ones can be done with the ape stats.
- a serpentman—no reason not to just use lizardman stats here, though.
- A fungal predator, whatever exactly that is (if I did this, I'd probably use Dark Young stats.)
- plenty of snakes, although I won't bother making customized versions; I've got a big constrictor and a poisonous one already.
LOCATIONS Maps that can be adapted to another setting, if needed
- whaling company building
- the route to Tazion; i.e. Sargavan and Mwangi regional map that covers the caravan route
- Fzumi salt mine
- small section of Kalabuto docks
- Tazion city ruins
- Temple of the Snake; ruins in Tazion
- Azlanti ziggurat
- Eleder city map
That last is actually the most likely to be useful to me, but the site-based adventuring maps are small; these aren't anything like the tedious "megadungeons" that we sometimes see.
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